


fluke

by nysscientia



Series: probabilities [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Slash, Psychological Trauma, Sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2011758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nysscientia/pseuds/nysscientia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barnes finds him, pins him to a wall and slides a knife under his chin.  Tony, responsible with his emotions as always, allows his panic to manifest as an incredulous snort.  Then the knife blade tightens against Tony’s neck, and he manages a suitably alarmed silence.</p>
<p>“How did you find me?” Barnes snaps.</p>
<p>“Be a lot harder to tell you if I bleed out in this alley,” Tony replies irritably.  The way Bucky’s got him pinned is making his shoulder stiff.</p>
<p>Barnes allows the knife to nip into Tony’s skin.  “A lot harder for you to tell anyone else how to find me, too.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	fluke

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from [tumblr](http://nysscientia.tumblr.com/). Written for [yunuen](http://yunuen.tumblr.com/).

Like most things in Tony’s life, discovering Bucky Barnes is a fluke.

After New York, after the Mandarin, after everything, he didn’t trust his own perspective, and he tried to help put someone else’s eyes in the sky. True to the Stark legacy, that ends in explosions and death, so Tony goes back to trying to surveil things his own damn self.

He’s fiddling with some tech designed to look for rarely-used frequencies, determine exactly what they are used for, a few other things– multipurpose, that kind of deal– when he stumbles across an old signal. _Old_ old. USSR old.

It’s also incredibly weak– barely detectable even with Tony’s best stuff, which is saying something. The transmitter happens to be passing in proximity at the same time that Tony’s testing those particular waves. Tony doesn’t bother to calculate the exact odds of that happening; too many variables, and that many digits gets boring– but it’s an incredible serendipity, at the very least.

Tony’s not into serendipity. He investigates.

Which is how he finds himself face-to-face with Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes: back, alive, and more bionic than ever before. Or, more accurately, Barnes finds him, pins him to a wall and slides a knife under his chin. Tony, responsible with his emotions as always, allows his panic to manifest as an incredulous snort. Then the knife blade tightens against Tony’s neck, and he manages a suitably alarmed silence.

“How did you find me?” Barnes snaps.

“Be a lot harder to tell you if I bleed out in this alley,” Tony replies irritably. The way Bucky’s got him pinned is making his shoulder stiff.

Barnes allows the knife to nip into Tony’s skin. “A lot harder for you to tell anyone else how to find me, too.”

But he doesn’t sound certain. Tony huffs out a frustrated breath.

“Look, there’s no way for you to be sure I haven’t already,” he says. “Maybe I have backup waiting to swoop in at the first sign of trouble. Maybe splitting my neck open will bring a strike team down on your head. Or maybe killing me won’t do you even a minor inconvenience, other than losing the chance to ever disable the tracking signal your fancy prosthetic there is broadcasting for anyone willing to listen.”

Tony stops talking, forces himself to breathe in and out, slow, even. In and out. There’s a chill starting in the air, just a slight nip mornings and evenings, but it’s enough that the blade against his neck feels bald and cold.

After an impossibly long deliberation that’s actually most likely only seconds, Barnes lowers the knife. Tony collapses against the cement wall, grateful to have agency over his own weight again even as he’s scraping his palms.

When he stands up, breathes himself through the adrenaline and turns, Barnes is still there, knife forgotten in his flesh hand. Tony glances at it reflexively, and Barnes’ knuckles tighten. He bares his teeth, more feral than consciously threatening.

It’s a lot to take in. Barnes has been propaganda fodder for decades, the faithful shadow and loyal right hand of Captain America himself, a hero of the war effort. In the newsreels, though, he never looked so– lost.

They do some verbal dancing, after that; Bucky stays carefully more than an arms’ length away from Tony at all times, knife flicking from one hand to the other and back. Tony contains his urge to buy the man a salt lick, maybe bring him to a forest clearing so he can flatten some grass into a bed and catch some sleep.

Barnes is good, obviously well trained, gives barely anything away– but Tony knows the lay of the land so much better. The few things that Barnes does let slip are small enough that almost no one would learn from them, but Tony’s been running data analysis on the SHIELD files that got published, tracking news stories, talking to Pepper and Romanoff and Hill. He quickly realizes that he’s dropped himself into the middle of huge game of covert musical chairs. Barnes is studying Bucky’s legacy as Steve’s shadow, Steve is tracking Bucky’s history as the Winter Soldier– Barnes is following Steve following Barnes.

Tony grits his teeth.

After a few more exchanges of non-information, Barnes gets bored or skittish or murderous or all of the above, and knocks Tony out for a good forty-five seconds. When Tony comes to, there’s no sign of where Barnes disappeared to, but he also hasn’t suffered any permanent bodily harm– Barnes must’ve been extremely delicate, if Tony just blacked out for a bit, rather than passing out cold for several hours– so he counts it as a win and goes home.

He also sets Jarvis up to track Barnes’ arm’s signal, because why the hell not.

-

Four days later, he’s sitting on the tower’s penthouse balcony when a figure hoists up and onto the rail.

“Call anyone else and you’ll be riddled with holes before they have a chance to slide open that door,” Barnes says, jerking his head towards the only way back into the tower. He’s got a gun pointed square at Tony’s gut. A bullet there would lay Tony out but leave him capable of speech, so Barnes is probably after information. Tony can work with that.

He sips his scotch. “Aw, baby, I like spending time just the two of us, too.”

Barnes looks nonplussed at that for a second before apparently deciding to ignore it.

“I’m not broadcasting a signal,” he announces instead.

Tony considers, then sets down his glass. He reaches out and Barnes’ grip on his pistol tightens.

“I’m not going to let you hand it to me, so either I pick it up or this conversation is over,” Tony snaps, gesturing at his tablet. Barnes’ eyes narrow, but he shrugs, like he doesn’t really care what Tony does.

Tony rolls his eyes and picks up the tablet. Barnes shifts his weight slightly when the screen lights up, maybe surprised to see an interface on what looks like just a six-by-eight plane of glass. If he’s been around this century for any stretch of time he’s probably seen tablets, but Stark tech isn’t exactly in wide distribution in the skulking assassin social circles. Tony ignores him altogether in favor of pulling up some stuff on his private server.

“Here,” Tony says, sets the tablet down on the balcony floor and slides it towards Barnes. Barnes is scarily graceful as he leaps down from the balcony rail, crouching to look at the tablet without his gun ever wavering.

It’s map of their borough, a red point of light blinking over Stark Tower. “Explain that.”

Barnes scoops up the tablet and disappears over the rail before Tony has time to cross the balcony.

“Should’ve seen that coming,” he mutters to himself.

-

Barnes is back the next day, apparently satisfied that the light on the tablet really does indicate his location. Tony thanks any deity willing to listen that he locked down the rest of Jarvis’ servers out of habit before passing the tablet over.

Instead of the balcony, Barnes finds Tony in his lab this time, which is worrying. But Pepper vehemently protested Tony’s approach to consulting experts on the tower remodel’s security– which was “don’t”– so a part of Tony just accepts that a breach was inevitable.

Barnes keeps his gun in hand but pointed down. Tony’s either been upgraded in trustworthiness or downgraded as a threat; whichever, it makes the conversation a lot less cold sweat-inducing, so that’s nice.

After he’s materialized out of nowhere like a ninja, Barnes smashes the tablet on the ground and waits for Tony to respond.

“That won’t stop me from being able to track you,” Tony says. “Edamame?”

Predictably, Barnes ignores Tony’s proffered bean pods. Tony likes to think they’re developing a rapport.

“Disable it,” Barnes growls. Then he raises the gun, a bit belatedly.

“Decided I’m not cluing anyone else in on your trail, have you?” Tony asks, and then it occurs to him to wonder why he hasn’t. Hill would be interested, certainly. He’s seen Romanoff more than once since the Project Insight fiasco, too, and she’s probably one of the only people around with the resources to take Barnes down if it becomes necessary.

Tony swallows, resolutely not thinking about occasional super-colleagues who may or may not know that one of their best friends from another lifetime is leaping around and waving guns in the air like an extremely disgruntled lemur.

“Still walking free,” Barnes says, reminding Tony that he is, once again, at gunpoint. Repeated exposure is making him way too comfortable with the situation. “You’re either playing an extremely long or an extremely ineffective game. I don’t particularly care which.”

“So you need my genius but you think I’m an idiot,” Tony summarizes. “No, that’s fine, I know all the steps to that tarantella. Have a seat.”

They edge around each other, negotiating space, but eventually Tony gets his hands on Barnes’ biotech. The only way he’s allowed to actually open up the arm is with a muzzle buried in his stomach, but that was to be expected. And it’s not the worst set of circumstances Tony’s had to engineer in, so.

After an hour and some change of tinkering, Barnes lowers the weapon. Tony realizes he’d forgotten the guy was even holding it.

He’s been muttering to himself, narrating the circuitry. It’s a beautiful piece of work, old and jury-rigged but intricate. He prods gently at a cluster of wires, realizes the thing might actually connect directly to Barnes’ nervous system. With the metal plating spread under Tony’s hands, the man is even more vulnerable than Tony thought.

“You don’t have any idea how this works, do you,” Tony observes.

He’s not expecting a reply, but after a pause Barnes says, “Never needed to know.”

“I think if I cut the right cord, I could kill you right now.”

Barnes flicks him in the jaw with the gun, more admonishing than threatening. “Better be sure it’s the right one, then.”

But he doesn’t raise his weapon again. Tony’s not sure what to make of that.

-

It takes five hours, but eventually Tony finds the transmitter and gets it disabled.

“This thing is ancient,” he says. “Practically blowing smoke signals. Want me to leave it switched off, or just yank it out?”

“You can remove it?” Barnes asks. He has something vaguely resembling a facial expression for a second before going blank again. Tony manages to bite back some snipe about all the things he can do, just nods.

“Do it.”

Once it’s out, just a tiny sliver of silver on the lab floor, Tony grabs the nearest heavy tool and smashes it.

Barnes stares at Tony for a long moment, unreadable. Then he waves for Tony to get his prosthetic arm closed back up.

He still has the gun in his flesh hand, but this time his gesture never angles it towards Tony.

-

Tony spends the next morning getting everything he remembers about the arm– which is a lot– recorded on a secure server, and then the next two weeks dealing with the fallout of SHIELD’s dissolution. He’s averaging a few hours’ sleep per night, so he’s on the verge of classifying his entire relationship with Barnes as an exhaustion-induced hallucination when the man shows up in his bedroom.

“Why haven’t you told anyone about me?” Barnes asks. He’s not looking at Tony, eyes on the opposite wall like he’s memorizing the contents of Tony’s walk-in closet.

“Oh, fine, just fine,” Tony replies. “And you? Nice you found time to visit; I know you’re busy, living on the run and all.”

Barnes shoots Tony a sardonic glare, which seems to imply at least a primitive form of personality. It’s intriguing.

“You’ve read my file. Looked it up as soon as you saw me the first time, everything you could find.” Barnes is just sitting on the edge of Tony’s bed, no weapon in sight. “Why haven’t you reported me to someone?”

“Who would I report you to?”

“Plenty of people are still looking for the Winter Soldier,” Barnes says. He looks up, pauses to catch and hold Tony’s gaze. “He did a lot of bad things.”

Tony knows, of course. He’s been focused on everything except that particular set of facts; but according to the files, the Winter Soldier is peerless at exploiting weak spots, so of course he goes straight to it. Tony swallows hard against adolescent memories of the taste of saline, of horribly expensive whiskey and vomit, of words like “when” and “how” and “no.” He is well aware.

“Get out,” he says. And then Barnes is up, across the room, pressing into Tony’s space.

“Why?” he repeats, voice low and threatening– but when Tony meets his eyes Barnes looks faraway, small. It’s so much worse than if Barnes were angry, if he were succeeding at intimidation.

“Get,” Tony repeats, “ _out_ ,” and he shoves Barnes, just once, square in his chest. He hasn’t seen a weapon but the man is definitely armed, could kill Tony a dozen ways even if he wasn’t, but Tony doesn’t give even the shadow of a fuck and he needs the Winter Soldier out of his bedroom immediately or neither of them are ever leaving it again.

Barnes leaves. Tony switches off the light in his bedroom and goes back to his workshop. He doesn’t get any sleep that night.

-

He still doesn’t tell anyone about Barnes, though. It’s stupid, probably– but if the last few years have taught Tony that secrets are dangerous, they’ve taught him a dozen times over that the truth is deadly.

He spends the next few nights in the shop or one of his assorted offices, sleeping on random bits of furniture or not sleeping at all. He doesn’t see even a glint of Barnes’ arm, and doesn’t think about the fact that it feels like he’s being given space.

When Tony does finally go back to his bedroom, sick of waking up with a sore back and blinding tension headaches, he’s not remotely surprised to see Barnes. He’s standing by the window this time, like they’ve had a tiff and he knows he’s in the doghouse.

He’s wearing a beanie, of all things. He looks like an idiot.

“Make it quick or come back tomorrow,” Tony says. He goes straight for his bureau, pulls out a pair of sleep pants. If he’s going to get shot by a nonagenarian, he might as well be comfortable.

“What, you haven’t missed my scintillating conversation?” Barnes retorts, and then they both freeze. He looks as surprised as Tony.

“You always were kind of an asshole in the reels,” Tony says after a beat. Barnes’ face shuts down again, his posture shifting infinitesimally. It’s vaguely more threatening, but Tony has been on and off the phone all day, working on a minimum of three crises at once, and he can’t find it in himself to care. He shucks off his socks, starts on the buttons of his shirt.

Barnes just stands, evidently content to watch Tony change into his pajamas.

It’s pretty weird.

It isn’t until Tony takes a step towards the bed that Barnes says, “You’re not going to tell anyone about me.”

“And your gun is holstered,” Tony snaps. “Now go get your phonograph checked, you’re repeating yourself, Jesus.”

After that, Tony is tempted to just turn out the lights and pretend Barnes isn’t there. He makes for the bed and sits down, possibly to do exactly that– but Barnes has learned that his one true weakness is a protracted silence, and eventually Tony can’t take it anymore.

The thing is, sometimes he still hears Pepper gasping “bullet holes?,” Rhodey gritting out “civilian equipment.” Tony realizes he’s tapping his index finger against his surgically-crafted sternum and stops himself.

“Look,” he says. “There are some things you’ve gotta figure out alone.”

Barnes looks anything but comprehending, but he leaps out the window and that’s the last Tony sees of him for a long time.


End file.
